Abdulah to Gov’t: Come clean on CLF

“It is our understanding that many companies, in fact, are making decent profits.

Why haven’t some of the profits used to repay some of their debt? We need to be informed why that is not taking place. Why are there no proper arrangements for repayment given the cash flows of those companies which have improved significantly post 2009?” Abdulah questioned. He was speaking at a press conference hosted at the party’s headquarters at St Joseph Village, San Fernando.

He said CLF had shares in companies such as Republic Bank, Clico, Angostura, insurance companies and so on. “Angostura is an iconic brand and we cannot have those dissipating. We cannot lose what is essentially part of our economic heritage by either a liquidator selling out or shareholders selling out to get cash to repay the debt,” he said.

Abdulah said the MSJ was opposed to the Government’s decision to go to Supreme Court to have CLF liquidated for repayment of an outstanding $15 billion owed from the bailout in 2009.

“In our view liquidation is a retrograde step because essentially what you are doing is selling all the assets to pay persons who are owed..In this case primarily the government,” Abdulah said. Liquidators are not interested in maintaining companies that are viable, he noted.

Abdulah said when a company goes bankrupt or into liquidation, voluntarily or court-ordered, persons begin to hover like ‘corbeaux around the carcass of that company.’ He said liquidators try to obtain assets at a price that is considerably less than the real value of the assets being sold.

The short-term solution to assets sales is unacceptable, he said, and called for full disclosure of all the information related to CLF/CLICO and the financial bailout.

The MSJ leader was also of the view that the persons who bought CLF to its 2008/9 crisis ought not to retain control of that company.

“We don’t believe that those shareholders involved in bringing CL Financial to its knees ought to now get back control of the company.

That will be a slap in the face of citizens of T&T and to those who have lost monies,” Abdulah said. He accused Finance Minister Colm Imbert of wanting to close the gap between revenue and expenditure in his budget before the end of this fiscal year and before the start of the new fiscal year.

Abdulah charged that the Government failed in all aspects within the past nine months of the last fiscal year. Among the failures he listed were poor international ratings and lower foreign exchange.

“Governments fiscal deficit continues to be large and many of the initiatives announced by the either not been initiated or started or where they have been, had limited success,” Abdulah said.